The historical development of Chile's doctoral education is closely tied to its semi-peripheral position in the world economy. Drawing from secondary data and historical sources on the development of doctoral education, we conducted a critical analysis of the different phases of doctoral education within the last 70 years, paying special attention to the reforms implemented in the last 15 years. Our analysis revealed that Chile's doctoral education is going through a phase of rapid expansion of doctoral enrolment, internationalisation, and quantification of academic quality, responding to the paradigm of the knowledge economy. Particularly, we argue that the emphasis on quantifying the quality of doctoral education unintentionally undermines the potential of doctoral education to support the processes of scientific and technological knowledge creation that truly address the most pressing issues of Chilean society.